The owner of the dog savagely stabbed to death in Central Park over the weekend cried out, “You killed my dog, you piece of s—t!” as the heartless attacker fled with his own pups, dramatic new video shows.
The clip – taken by a witness to the heated Saturday night clash and obtained by WABC — shows the moments after 14-year-old pit bull-German shepherd mix Eli was mortally wounded by another pet owner near the park’s 106th Street and East Drive entrance.
“You better not show your face!” Eli’s 51-year-old owner, Brian, snarled as he followed the suspect, seen fleeing with his own three dogs, two of which were unleashed. “You killed my dog, you piece of s–t!”
The witness, who wanted to remain anonymous and was walking his own dog at the time, told WABC he is “still shaken.”
“There was a dog on the ground that’s dead,” the witness said. “A lot of blood around it. There was a guy who was trying to do something to the dog and three other dogs without leashes, three pitbulls, around him.”
“There was one guy standing up and yelling, crying basically, ‘You killed my dog! You stabbed my dog! You started this.’”
Brian – who declined to give his last name for fear of retribution – was in the park with his wife and two dogs around 8:30 p.m. when he chastised the other man for letting his pooches snap at their other pup, a tiny 17-year-old miniature pinscher named Sadie.
“I was trying to correct him and say, ‘It’s not OK, your dog just tried to bite my dog,’” Brian told The Post in an exclusive interview Sunday. “And then he just wanted to be a tough guy and he started trying to talk to me like he’s my dad. I know the guy, I’ve spoken to him. But his dogs never tried to bite my dog.”
“We just had words, like, regular, stupid guy words,” Brian said, adding that he and his wife, Melanie, kept trying to walk away.
But things escalated quickly, Melanie told The Post: “It happened so fast, so sudden.”
Before the couple knew it, the man had loosened his own dogs off their leashes — and sicced them on Brian.
“All of a sudden, three dogs are attacking me and [my wife] picked up my little dog … because [the suspect] was trying to punch me,” Brian recalled.
“He was exhausted,” Brian said of his poor pooch. “When he was younger he would have been able to handle this.”
Brian punted one of the aggressive dogs, he said, but the leashes had all tangled together. That’s when the man allegedly whipped out a folding knife and sunk it into the senior pup — who Brian rescued 12 years ago.
He heard Eli cry out.
“My dog never stood up again,” Brian said.
The heartbroken owner rushed Eli to a vet on 63rd Street, where doctors found a tumor that likely would have killed the pooch in about five months, he said.
That, combined with the internal injuries and the thousands of dollars it would have cost to try to patch him back up, left Brian with little choice but to put him down.
The callous attacker, seen wearing an orange hat, gray shirt and blue jeans, had not been caught by Monday morning.
Brian had described the suspect’s dogs as mini bullies – a mix of the American pit bull terrier and American Staffordshire terrier.
Meanwhile, the couple said they’re going to stop walking Sadie in Central Park – and Melanie said she’s not sure she ever wants a new pup.
“I don’t want to see that happen again,” she said. “I’m sad and I’m scared about what happened [Saturday].”
